Grants Blog

Archive for December, 2010

Congress has just approved major changes to the Government Performance and Results Act, pushing for not only better performance from federal agencies and programs, but also better reporting and more transparency.

The measure calls for federal agencies to identify their top priorities, publicly report program results, and identify ineffective and duplicative federal programs.

Each federal agency would designate a Chief Operating Officer and a Performance Improvement Officer with primary responsibility for pursuing cost-savings through the improved analysis and coordination of duplicative programs. These officials would also look at how to better coordinate administrative functions common to every agency, such as purchasing. However, the bill gives no specific direction to agencies on how to conduct any of these assessments.

Agency and governmentwide information relating to performance is to be posted to a new public website on a quarterly basis.

President Obama is expected to sign the legislation, the Government Performance and Results Modernization Act of 2010.

It’s nearly two years late, but information about subawards under federal grants is now available on the USAspending.gov website.

In early December, the site began posting subaward information associated with new prime grant awards over $25,000, as required by the Transparency Act. According to OMB, so far data on 930 subawards in areas such as health, food and nutrition, and transportation has been displayed.  OMB expects that number to grow very quickly as new information becomes available and new subawards are made.

I looked around on the site and tried several searches. The information you can get is pretty extensive and it is really easy to use – in my opinion. Anyone else looked at the site or have any thoughts about it?